Who Are You?

Who are you?

"I want to know who you are." You state. You had already decided you wanted her to join your effort, and you had already deemed her a worthy potential ally. Greater knowledge of her would be an immediate necessity if you had any hope of understanding her and utilizing her to her fullest potential. "This doesn't really have to get personal does it? I suppose it already is, to a degree. Very well then. I am Súgain Brannach, an apprentice Atmoran Ranger from the capital city of Angrir. I would've become a star-clad ranger last month, if it weren't for the **** of my mentor. There isn't much more to tell really." She finishes. Despite your usual disdain for overly long discourse and unnecessary information, you discover yourself wanting to know more about her. "Your mentor? I take it that he was a Ranger then?" You inquire. "Yes SHE was. There are no male rangers, men simply aren't fit enough for the job. She wasn't just any ranger either, she was a Seventh Star Master Ranger by the time she was 30 years old. Her name was Brynkyora Vultheld, the Hawk of Myri. She met my birth mother during her service in Jomsland Hold, she was like a parent to me..."

Something about her wording struck you as odd. "What mother can one have besides the one which births them?" You ask plainly. "The person who gave birth to me is not the one who raised me. That's not to say that my blood mother abandoned me, no she was a better mother than most. I never lacked for any worldly necessity under her care, but she had little time with me. Life is full of distractions, it left her but sparse moments to spare for her own daughter aside from simple life lessons and occasional advice. I know that she tried, but her love for her country was greater than her love for me could ever have been. My mother loved this country and its government to a fault. As a result, she suffered the pain of an unrequited love in her final days, and when she died Atmor shed not one damn tear for her passing. In the wake of her ****, I had only Bryn to cling to, and eventually **** would take her from me as well. No, that's not quite right. It wasn't just **** that took her from me, it was Atmor itself." She laments. Something about her has softened, and an almost childlike sadness permeates her gentle voice, tempered with bitterness and remorse. "Why didn't your father comfort you?" You ask her. "What father? I haven't the slightest idea what **** sired me nor do I care. It would hurt Bryn to hear me say it though, she was rather fond of men. She did not love Atmor as my mother did, at least not unconditionally. She loved its people and it's places, but she had no love for its social and political structures. The pomp and grandeur of the ruling elite was practically blasphemous to her, or so she said to me. She hated the slavery of men and the poverty which the ruling class so readily inflicts upon the majority of the populace of Atmor. Bryn was not alone in her contempt for such things, but who could expect the aristocracy of an entire nation to cast aside their fortunes out of scorn for the very system which had afforded them their own luxurious lifestyles. She never told me why she endured service to a government she repeatedly claimed to abhor, or why she was so faithful to it in the end.

Over a decade ago, when the High Chancellor Varsa was wracked with a strange and potent disease, Bryn took it upon herself to find the greatest medical and magical minds in Atmor that they might provide a cure. Alas, they could not. Bryn did not take the loss well, she insisted that the disease was the work of an assassin, that it was a plot against Atmor. She quickly withdrew herself into seclusion becoming totally consumed by, and fixated upon, her search for evidence of a conspiracy. The disease had progressed at a slow and yet relentlessly steady rate, ultimately taking several years to finally kill the High Chancellor. Any rational ranger would ask themselves, what assassin would be willing to wait years for their target to die? Within the first year she claimed to have uncovered several clues which seemed to suggest the involvement of a particularly obscure and clandestine cult known to but a few, as The Gilded Synod.

Rumors and conjecture abounded wherever this cult was mentioned and at first her attempts at proving this to anyone, including me, were at best unconvincing. Even when she handed me several notes and journals, which I still carry, that bore strange seals I did not believe that the cult even really existed. It wasn't until she handed me one such letter which bore the unmistakable seal of Councilor Svarro of Visland upon its bindings, that I finally considered the unlikely possibility that Bryn might be right. What Bryn had actually uncovered was not a proof of conspiracy with regard to a past crime, but rather written evidence of a current plot against the new High Chancellor Skínandi. The note detailed the arrangements for the transportation of a pair of hired assassins with the aid of the Atmoran Trade Syndicate. In her research, members of nearly every group, guild, and company in Atmor had been implicated with allegiance to, or subjugation by, the Synod. There was no one that we could trust, except one another. Then only a short while later, the assassins arrived in Angrir as described. Skínandi immediately had them apprehended, a mistake which ultimately proved costly, against Bryn's advice to kill them on sight.

In the cloaking darkness of the night they escaped, just as Bryn had said they would. They scoured the halls of the Glimmerspire silently and easily, there were unusually few guards standing watch that night. Bryn, however, had been waiting for them. She had told no one where she would be, or that she would be there at all. When I discovered her on my way to her chambers she was nearly unrecognizable, her body covered in deep slashes and riddled with shards of frigid ice. It was clear that she had lived up to her fame, two nightingales lay dead at the opposite end of the hall only two steps apart from one another, each with an arrow through their right eye. Nightingales are trouble enough for any ranger, and it is a feat indeed that she managed to defeat them both so deftly, but they were not alone. Something else lay slumped against a wall nearby, I say something because I haven't the slightest idea what it was. It had a sort of human form, but it did not strike me as human at all... It was not natural. It was thin, almost feminine, and covered entirely in metal unlike any armor I've ever seen. I dared not approach it but found myself staring at it in morbid curiosity. It's clawed fingers glistened with what must have been my mentors blood, I realized then that the nightingales were not alone, nor was I. A second party was also witness to the aftermath of this nightmarish skirmish.

It had taken me nearly too long to realize the one detail that mattered now, Bryn's killer was still alive. Immediately I pieced together what had happened here, in the final moments of her life. Bryn had expected the nightingales certainly and had likely expected them to have accomplices, and as such she dispatched them in the first moments of the fray. The metallic figure however, out paced them as they fell and deflected her arrows, forcing her into a melee she was ill prepared for. This confrontation ultimately resulted in her assailant being mortally wounded and falling into its current position, and her all but incapacitated. She was not yet dead, not until a mage's spell struck her with a volley of thaumaturgical ice at close range. The melee had drawn her focus away successfully, long enough to invite the finishing blow. In that instant I did what I am certain she would have wanted me to do, I fled. I sprinted with all that was in me down that hall and through several corridors, all the while pursued by my mentors murderer. I called for guards but they did not answer, instead it was my pursuer who answered by striking me in the side with the same ice that had ended Bryn's life. No longer entertaining any hopes of outrunning my enemy I leapt from one of the spires parapets, into the waters of the river below. As I did, I spun around to catch a glimpse of the proverbial hound at my heels, though I had already determined who it was. The face of the Ushyen Advisor Takri' Shi stared back at me, devoid of any perceptible emotion, as I plummeted from her sight. Bryn was correct in her belief that the corruption of Atmor ran deep, but even so there were still those who we trusted ever so slightly, and Takri' Shi was among them.

I was immediately declared an enemy of the republic and accused of aiding Bryn in the **** of High Chancellor Skínandi, who was now nowhere to be found, effectively silencing me and obscuring the true nature of that nights events. Much of what happened after I fled that city is a blur. Make no mistake I am no stranger to Atmoran politics, I knew that power had shifted in the capital almost instantly. I dared not stay there for even a moment, instead racing for the only port in the north not already run by the Synod in one capacity or another, Ayersbruk. Obviously that didn't go well for me either because here I am explaining it all to you." Her woe was plain now, no longer hidden by a facade of apathy.

The woman before you was a remarkable example of the mercurial nature of women, one moment she doesn't want to get personal, and the next she's answering questions you haven't even asked yet. To her credit however, it did save you the time and tedium of asking. You begin to wonder what other questions she might answer for you.